


The Beggar's Dilemma

by MikeyPW



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, American Sign Language, Assassins & Hitmen, Deaf Character, Fanon, Gay, Gay Male Character, Gay Parents, M/M, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:55:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29755068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeyPW/pseuds/MikeyPW
Summary: They swore, vowed, promised but most importantly guaranteed them that they wouldn't do it again. Yet there they were, driving all over the country in search of the men they were hired to kill.
Relationships: Mr. Numbers/Mr. Wrench (Fargo)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

After all atrocities they had been through, never had they been under _this_ much pressure.

Wes was scrambling around the grocers like a madman trying to stop his oldest son from crawling up an elderly lady’s skirt whilst attempting to carry his screaming youngest son who was intent on wriggling out of his arms. Grady watched the scene from the corner of his eye, but most of his attention was on his orange credit card that was being rejected for the second time.

“I-I don’t understand, it was working earlier this morning.” He frets as his thick black eyebrows knot together. The cashier looked at him apathetically and took his credit card from the machine before unceremoniously cutting it in half with a pair of scissors. God knows that if he wasn’t holding the hand of his middle son, he would have reached across the counter and strangled the cashier to death but instead, he offered her the filthiest glare that you could ever imagine to see on a human being’s face. “It was working! You just needed to give it a chance!” He pleaded with a slight tinge of fury lining his voice. In his emotion, he loosen the grasp on his son’s hand and in his anger, he didn’t notice when he slipped away.

“Hurry up for Pete’s sake!” the lady behind him in the line grumbled and he felt himself about to combust.

With his eyes even more desperate than a homeless beggar, Grady sighed and slowly asked the cashier “Can I please just go get my husband’s card and I’ll pay for it all?” He asked looking at all the groceries that were meant to be feeding his family of five for the next week.

The cashier, baring a loathing snarl, scoffed at him. “God doesn’t let you fags do what you want, so why should I?”

After hearing that sentence, Grady had to physically restrain himself from throwing a punch. With enough sass to make this God fella gasp, he lowered his sunglasses so they sat precariously on the end of his nose. “God hasn’t stopped me from doing fuck all and neither will you.” He then processed to yank a box of fruit loops off the conveyor belt and stuff it in his jacket.

“Hey!” The cashier yelled at him but he simply just flipped her off and trudged off in search of his deranged husband and sons.

He found his oldest son, Sage, with his fist in a tub of ice cream and cookie crumbs all over his rosy cheeks. The adults around looked on in utter jaw-dropped shock when Grady grabbed his son’ non-ice-creamed hand before dipping his own finger into the creamy dessert and licking it off. He found his middle son, Monty, having a punch on with an older kid over a Hulk Hogan figurine and promptly saw that he stop it immediately, snatching the action figure from the other kid’s hands and handing it to his son. He found his husband sprawled out on the floor trying to grasp a hold of their youngest son, Beau, who had managed to get himself stuck underneath one of the shelves.

Eventually, after the whole shopping trip had gone to shit, the Wrench-Numbers cohort were strapped into their shitty station wagon with a box of cereal, a tub of ice cream, two separated halves of a credit card and a Hulk Hogan toy.

 _No food then?_ Wes asked with a weary expression as they drove home.

 _Very little. All stolen._ Grady signed back tragically. _She cut my card._

_You didn’t have any cash?_

_7 dollars isn’t going to buy much. You got anything?_ Grady asked hopefully.

Wes solemnly shook his head. _I spent it on the gas to get there._

As if to announce the end of the conversation, Wes took his husband’s fingers in his own and laid the pair of intertwined hands on his thigh.

Grady heard the kids giggle in the back seat and turned his head to see Sage sign _Get a room!_

Dinner that night was a struggle. Sage had thankfully also lifted a string of sausages from the deli, having tied them around his waist beneath his jacket so they were washed and fed to the family with some suspiciously coloured potatoes that Wes had somehow managed to dig up in the garden even though they were in the middle of winter and the vegetable garden was blanketed with snow. They ate in a loud, conversation-filled silence, their hands telling stories and jokes as they avoided the unpalatable black potato mush. Grady, the only hearing person in the household, let himself soak up the sounds of his family laughing thunderously after the punchline of a hilarious fable.

Behind Wes’ chuckling, he was so sorrowfully worried. He hadn’t been able to land a job since they cut their ties with Moses. Normal jobs didn’t require you to know how to dismember the human body and cover your tracks when committing heinous crimes and the fact he couldn’t hear didn’t help his chances at employment. Grady had had minor jobs here and there – salesman, receptionist, bartender – and was currently a fill-in maths teacher at the local high school but the teachers had gone on strike for the last two months in hopes to get more federal funding for education systems across the country. The money they had saved wasn’t going to last the end of the week and his kids were hungry _now_.

Grady saw the slight frown between his husband’s brows and ran his foot up his shin under the table. When he turned his gaze to Grady he mouthed the words ‘We’ll be okay. In the end if not now.’

Wes held those words at the forefront of his mind as he watched Grady read to the boys later that night. He sat at one end of the bed with the three kids at the other, concentrating on reading his lips as he read the book aloud.

“They could not find Bilbo with the ring on, slipping in and out of the shadows of the trees, running quick and quiet, and keeping out of the sun; so soon they went back grumbling and cursing to guard the door. Bilbo had escaped.” At that moment, Grady shut the book closed forcefully and the kids erupted into a flurry of pleads and begs for him to continue the story.

 _If you go to bed now, we can get up early to read the next chapter._ He said, tucking his sons in and kissing all their cheeks in turn. Before he could turn the lamp off though, Monty tugged on his sleeve and looked at him with big, curious eyes – so much like Wes’.

 _Does he meet up with the dwarves again or do they leave him?_ He asks with excited desperation.

 _Who knows._ Grady smirks and ruffles his hair before leaving them to sleep.

Whist Wes brushed his teeth in the bathroom, Grady retired to their bedroom where he picked up his guitar and idly hummed and strummed at a few chords. Before long he found himself singing the words to Lenard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' and playing the suitable notes. He didn’t stop when he felt the bed dip and Wes’ warm figure lean against his own. One of his hands came around to rest on Grady’s chest, the other cradling his throat as he nuzzled his face into his neck; immersing himself in the vibrations of Grady’s crooning. The brunette let himself sag into his partner’s body as he belted out the lyrics.

Suddenly, the phone by their bed jolted into a violent ringing and his voice came to a stop.

 _Phone._ He signed against Wes’ hand as he leant forward to answer it. Wes didn’t move much, his whole body seemingly being fed by the trembling of Grady’s voice box as he spoke.

“Hello?” The dark-eyed man asked unsuspectingly before his heart leapt into his throat.

“Numbers.” The voice answered back in return and Grady froze as if his blood had solidified within him. He tried to reply, he did, but in lieu of a response, he could only stammer nonsensical sounds of shock. Moses Tripoli barely needed him to say something intelligible to offer him both the dream he had been waiting for and the nightmare he had been dreading.


	2. Two

As most stories usually go, it all started with about 2 million tonnes of cocaine, a few hard to believe lies and a terrible businessman.

Ronnie Stewart was so terribly English that he perpetually swam in a puddle of British etiquette. He drank tea like he was dying of thirst and could sing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the drop of a hat but there was one thing about him that wasn’t English at all - his manners. He was quite possibly the slyest person to roam the Earth, slithering around the criminal underworlds, wetting his beak on anything from sex trafficking, drugs, booze, gambling and pure bloody corruption.

This obviously made him rather appealing to the syndicate back home. Fargo watched with jealous eyes as their English counterpart raked in millions. For years now, Moses had made many dealings with the likes of Ronnie Stewart and had earned them both squillions of dollars but even he would suffer at the hand of the wily Mr Ronnie.

It was agreed. 2 million tonnes of cocaine were to be shipped from Glasgow to Moosonee, Canada before being carried to Fargo over the course of five years. Fargo would hand over 50% of all profit they made from the drugs to Stewart and that was that.

Until…

Moses got the call on a Thursday night, the quietest night of the week, telling him that the first ship holding the coke had tragically sunk. Pissed off, but level-headed, he ordered the second shipment come in straight away. Three days later, Ronnie calls the Tripoli residence again to inform him that the feds had the Canadian borders swarmed and they had to turn the ship around.

Oh poor Ronnie Stewart, he shouldn’t have taken Moses Tripoli for a fool. Two times in a row is bad planning, nothing ever happens two times in a row unless you’re the world’s unluckiest person. Or you’re being ripped off.

It was war. Fargo against Ronnie’s gang and boy was it bloody. Attempts had been made on Moses’ life, in his own home so he shot back with two assassins sent to Stewart’s bedroom. They send one of yours to the emergency department, you send one of them to the morgue. They bring a knife, you bring a gun – that was the general kind of attitude. It was brutal.

6 months into the war and Fargo is losing men as well as profit at devastating rates. Moses isn’t a desperate man or a dependant one, but even he could sorely admit this was going to take more than all he could give. This was going to take the best of the best of the best. The two greatest hitmen in the world…

Wrench and Numbers.

Grady sat clenching the phone to his ear, numbly listening to Moses’ low voice on the other end. Tripoli ended with “consider it, you’ll be set for the rest of your lives” and the line went dead.

Grady never used his advantage of hearing to lie to Wes but in this one rare instance, the shock on his brain and the whole ordeal made him fabricate a fib when Wes asked who it was on the phone.

 _Is it something bad?_ He asked, his eyes folded into a shape of concern for his partner.

 _They rejected your disability pension again._ He signed back half-heartedly. Maybe he just wanted there to be one more night of normal before he told Wes the truth or maybe he was hoping it had been a dream he had conjured up. Neither possibility mattered as the two men shuffled under the blankets of their bed, their body’s tangled up the way they had been every night since they were thirteen, their three children sleeping soundly in the room next to them. The small, withering house held a treasured type of heaven that Grady couldn’t imagine living without.

He wished the loving peace would last on forever.

He woke up at four in the morning to Wes gently gurgling away in his sleep. Though his eyes were tired, his brain was running like a greyhound jacked up on cocaine around his skull so he slithered from beneath the blankets and dragged himself to the kitchen. It was there he stood on the chill of the tiles slowly arising to the fact he was going to have to what he had pledged to never do again. As soon the surrogate had become pregnant with Sage, there was no question that they give it all up – the tracking down, the intimidation, the dealing and the killing. Moses had been understanding but unhappy about their decision to want out yet he begrudgingly supplied protection for them and their budding family should danger arise.

Grady had to steady himself against the breakfast bar to think for a few long, drawn-out moments. _You’ll be set for the rest of your lives_ Moses’ words rang through his head over and over again until his inner voice seemed to chant it. With the figures Tripoli had been throwing around, it was too good to be true – an utter dream. But behind the figures of dollars and the promise of an incomprehensible amount of money were the things that prevented him from getting more than five hours of sleep a night, that made him (and Wes who had it just as bad, if not worse) anxiety attacks and paralysing panic. Although his days of killing for the Tripoli syndicate were heavily blurred and slurred by his habits of drinking the trauma away, he still lived with his past hanging over his shoulder every day. That was enough for him to turn the offer away, the pain of it all, but on top of that was the fact he had three angelic saints for kids. Taking the job would put them in harm’s way and if harm were to come to them… Grady would die a thousand deaths of gory guilt. As well as that, it wasn’t rare for someone to get hurt on a job. He had taken many a bullet and gained too many scars to fathom – that he didn’t really care much about – but whenever it was Wes to get hit, to get stabbed, it was as if his physical injury became Grady’s mental injury and vice versa.

Violently ripping Grady from his thoughts, Monty appeared from the corner of his eye in his little blue pyjamas with a woollen blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His eyes were still squinted with a thin layer of sleep as he yawned and signed _The leak above my side of the bed is letting snow in again_. He explains before grabbing a book from the shelf and settling down at the breakfast bar.

 _Danny the champion of the world, again?_ Grady asks, referencing the aged copy of the Roald Dahl book he had seen Monty read at least 7 times.

Monty shrugged and quickly signed _I’ve already read all the other books on the shelf a few times, this one is the best one. Sage says likes Fantastic Mr Fox because he thinks stealing is cool, but really it’s the only one he’s read._ He smirks before diverting his eyes to the worn page in front of him.

Grady looked down upon him sadly. Monty was a bright kid, the type of kid that just thrived off of knowledge and actively sought out things to learn. Reading was his biggest pleasure. If you didn’t distract him, he could sit on the couch for days at a time just simply devouring the pages of books. The tragic thing was that the Wrench-Numbers’ household had the glummest selection of books in the world. There were a total of four novels on the shelf suitable for kids and two adult books that Wes would skim through occasionally. All of those books had either been stolen or found.

Grady thought back to Moses’ offer. He would get Monty such a massive library that he would have one of those sliding ladders to help him reach for books. No longer would his kids have to sit through the third reading of The Hobbit, pretending they didn’t know what was going to happen next. He would happily pay for Monty to join all the book clubs and Sage, who loved anything to do with basketball, could take part in all the basketball tournaments he wanted because they’d be able to afford it tenfold. And even after all that, Beau could go to art lessons like he’d always wanted to. They wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night to grab extra blankets from the cupboard because the radiator would be left on all night and the roof above Monty would get fixed so he could enjoy a few more hours of sleep. Or maybe they would move out to a better house in a better town to indulge in better living. They could, if they wanted, because money would be the least of their worries.

He shook the conflicting thoughts from his head as he leant over the counter to kissed Monty’s head, breathing in the musky smell of sleep that still lingered on each and every strand of his auburn hair. He tapped his shoulder to take his attention away from the book momentarily and those moss green eyes, so identical to Wes’, came to meet his charcoal ones. _I love you._ He said before fingerspelling it out for him again so he knew the exact severity of his adoration.

 _I know, A-B-B-A, I love you too._ He smiled back, signing the Jewish word for father that the kids used for Grady.

Leaving Monty to read in the kitchen, Grady crawled back into bed with his husband. He lay there for a lengthy while, soaking up the warmth of the blankets and pillows and Wes. But soon he couldn’t physically hold on until Wes awoke naturally so he tenderly swiped his nose over the younger man’s before kissing into his slack lips. Slowly, the life in Wes’ body increased and his hands came to sit on his husband’s hips as he relished in the morning air and affection of his partner.

 _A nice way to wake up_. He said as he pulled away, his hands only just visible in the dim light of dawn. The brunette, all bundled up in Wes’ arms and legs ignored his comment and grazed his lips against the other’s protruding Adam’s apple. Wes sighed a deep, content sigh as he ran his fingers through Grady’s thick, ebony hair.

 _I love you._ The older signed against Wes’ chest before signing it again in front of his eyes. Wes smiled at the words but the happy gesture didn’t make his pupils gleam like usual because he could sense something uneasy beneath his partner’s eyes.

 _Is there something wrong?_ He asked softly, his hands turning hesitant in seeing his husband’s bothered expression.

Wordlessly, Grady tucked his face into the crook of Wes’ neck as if to absorb the goodness of his being so it would be less damaging to have to shatter it to smithereens.


End file.
